first-time home owner, business owner, parent...

No-Sew Ikea Curtain Modification

Give me a drill, saw and some wood and I’ll build you a table. Hand me some leftover card stock and a glue gun and I’ll make you a crafty little mobile or whip up some fun scrapbooking accouterments. Old chair ready for the dumps? I’ll fix it!

But there is one little crafty gene that missed this little DIYer’s hands and that is the ability to sew. My mom is quite the seamstress. She used to whip up all my Halloween costumes and school play costumes without batting an eye.

There was this time I attempted to sew pillow covers. They were…decent.

The truth is that sewing machines and I don’t really get along. I have one. I’ve used it on occasion. It does not like me.

Lucky for me there’s another handy tool out there for the sewing challenged. Make way for heavy duty hem tape. Okay, so it won’t help you create Molly Ringwald’s dress from Pretty in Pink for this year’s Halloween costume, but it’s pretty sick when you’re making and/or modifying curtains…which is exactly what I used it for to modify these {super affordable} Ikea panels for my pantry.

Save for this very bizarre little built-in cabinet/pantry in the foyer of my little home, there is pretty much zero storage. So, this has become the toy chest for, well, everything. It’s like an oversized junk drawer. If it doesn’t fit somewhere else and doesn’t look pretty, it hides in here. But in order to hide, you must be hidden, hence the curtain.

Hem tape can be used to make curtain panels from fabric, but I found these panels for less than the cost of any fabric, so all I had to do was…HEM…you know, with an iron!

What you need:

Heavy duty iron-on hem tape

Fabric scissors

Iron

Measuring tape

Curtain {to be modified} or fabric of choice — I used the Lenda curtain panel from Ikea in 55×98

First measure the length you’ll need for the curtain. Be sure to account for the existing tabs {on a pre-made curtain} or the creation of a tab {if using an untouched fabric panel}, as well as the fold for the hem at the bottom of the panel. I usually do a nice, chunky hem, around 3 to 4 inches.

Then measure and cut. I find that it’s easiest to fold the fabric to give you a better line and it also helps to use push pins to hold the line, since you’re working with a lot of fabric.

First fold your edge to the way it will look when it’s hanging and iron on the fold. This will give you a nice straight line to follow with the hem tape. To add the hem tape, roll the hem tape out along the line, cut and iron the tape to the fabric with the paper side up. Let cool.

Once cool, peel the paper off and lay your fold over the line before ironing once more. Let cool.

And that’s it! Maybe some day I’ll need to sew costumes for my children, but for now I’ll stick to heavy duty hem tape for all my sewing needs.

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